20.26: Gaming as a Writing Metaphor

Writing Excuses

Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler

Fiction, Business, Careers

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What separates the way we experience a game versus the way we experience a prose narrative? Erin Roberts has written for many games, and she loves games particularly because they give the person experiencing the narrative more choice and more direct agency over what happens. This changes the way that we experience story. When you’re writing a game, the main thing you have to figure out is the actions: what are the potential things that could happen—and therefore, what are the verbs? We dive into decision, audience buy in, and ultimately try to answer the question: what does gaming teach us about making and finding meaning?

Homework: Take a project you’re working on and imagine that someone is making a game of it. What would that game be? What would be the actions that the characters would be doing? What would be the part of the world that the game would be focused on? Feel free to look at examples of this (like the games that were made based on Lord of the Rings.)

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Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Dan Wells, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
0:05.6	If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.com
0:11.8	slash writing excuses.
0:14.9	Season 20, episode 26.
0:19.6	This is writing excuses.
0:22.3	Gaming as a writing metaphor.
0:24.2	I'm Howard.
0:25.0	I'm Aaron.
0:25.8	I'm Dong Juan.
0:26.4	And I'm Dan.
0:28.0	And we get to talk about gaming.
0:30.3	Yay.
0:31.2	Prepare for a six-hour episode.
0:33.4	Yeah, I know.
0:34.0	I was like, this is actually sort of hard because there's so much that you can talk about when it comes.
0:37.7	This playthrough of writing excuses.
0:39.9	Exactly.
0:40.7	Kind of speed run.
0:41.7	Oh, my gosh, yes.
0:43.2	But I've been thinking about sort of what is it that like separates the way that we game from the way that we write, the way that we experience prose narrative and the way we experience being in a game. And the thing that I,
0:56.9	the reason I really love games is I actually think that sometimes giving the person experiencing
1:02.8	the narrative more choice and more direct agency over what happens, whether that's true or you
	...

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